Poland has traditionally been treated as an emigration country. Since recently Poland has been changing into an emigration-immigration country. The latter, namely immigration, was boosted by the European Union membership and by stable and strong growth of the country. In the last years,...

Economic analysis is used to compare different paradigms for understanding the marketplace for religions and religious ideas. The "Sacred Canopy" paradigm views it necessary for social stability to grant monopoly power to an official state religion. The "New Paradigm" views separation of Church...

Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Survey (SOEP), this paper assesses the relationship between life satisfaction and religious practice. The main new result here is longitudinal. It is shown that individuals who become more religious over time record long term gains in life...

Participation rates in higher education differ persistently between some groups in society. Using two British datasets we investigate whether this gap is rooted in students' misperception of their own and other's ability, thereby increasing the expected costs to studying. Among high school...

Several countries have recently abolished or significantly reduced their taxes on bequests.Bequest taxes, on the other hand, were among the first to be introduced when modernsystems of taxation were developed at the end of the nineteenth century. We propose anexplanation for these facts which is...

This paper throws new light on the relationship between income and democracy. Using data for 162 countries over 1960-2018, we show that the causal relationship between political and economic development is U-shaped: "intermediate" political regimes significantly lead to inferior economic...

Why do some leaders invest in significant nation-building policies and others do not? Why does nation-building occur at certain junctures in time and not others? In our research, we investigate what motivates leaders to nation build. We argue that threats to their regime motivate rulers to...

This paper investigates the role played by immigrants and their children in shaping native attitudes toward immigrants in the European Union. By exploiting the 2017 Special Eurobarometer on immigrant integration, we show that countries with a relatively high share of immigrants are more likely...

This paper studies the effect of female political representation on violence against women. Using a Regression Discontinuity design for close mayoral elections between female and male candidates in Brazil, we find that electing female mayors leads to a reduction in episodes of gender violence....

This paper investigates the long-run effects of climate change on conflict by examining cooling from 1400-1900 CE, a period that includes most of the Little Ice Age. We construct a geo-referenced and digitized database of conflicts in Europe, North Africa, and the Near East from 1400-1900, which...